Friday Faves 12.29 + Christmas recap

Hi friends! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. It’s been a lovely blur between Christmas and New Years, and I’ve enjoyed all of this time with the crew. We’ve enjoyed slow mornings, hikes, shopping, nails, reading, and movies. I’m definitely not looking forward to school returning, especially the early morning scramble and hours of homework.

I hope that my friends who celebrated Christmas this week had a beautiful holiday. My dad and stepmom were out of town – my step-grandmother passed away. She was so kind and wonderful, and I’m grateful we were blessed to have her in our lives. We had a low-key Christmas Eve at home with Chinese takeout and Christmas Chronicles, and I met up with madre for midnight mass. They turned the lights down for Silent Night and it was the perfect way to start the holiday.

The girls were up bright and early for Santa’a gifts and stockings, and then the family came over for family gifts, tamales, beans, egg casserole, cinnamon rolls, and the Pilot’s famous egg nog.

We spent the morning together, drinking coffee and eggnog, and exchanging gifts,

and everyone went home to chill for a few hours.

We took a walk and dropped off cookies to our neighbors. — I bake for two weeks in December and freeze everything. This way, it’’s not stressful and we have a big assortment of goodies for neighbors and holiday cookie trays. These cookies, these cookies, and peppermint bark are always on the list.

Then, we had 20 people over for Christmas dinner and it.was.everything.

Appetizers were this giant cheese board:

(plus a smaller board I placed on one of the tables for snacking)

Artichoke dip and crackers

ALL the sweets (chocolate bourbon pecan pie, pear pie that a friend brought over, yule log, different coffee cakes and cookies)

and for dinner, we smoked two large organic turkeys, two giant grass-fed beef tenderloins, made horseradish sauce, gravy, asparagus, salad, and madre brought over cheesy potatoes. The meat was all from ButcherBox and cooked perfectly on the Traeger.

The hit of the night was the games!! I got this idea from a friends’ Christmas party: Saran Wrap Ball! You wrap a ton of goodies into a ball, and then one person unwraps it while the person next to them rolls two dice (die? I don’t know these things). When that person hits doubles, the timer stops, and the ball goes to the next person. If the person unwraps a mini bottle of alcohol, it’s an option for them to take a shot (or hand the mini bottle to another willing adult to take the shot for them).

Here are some of the goodies I wrapped into the ball:

and the finished product:

It was a day full of fun times, good food, and lovely gifts, and as always, my favorite part is being with so many people we love so much, at the same time. I’m so sad the holidays are over!!

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves party, but I only have a few for ya:

– Wonka. It was SO good; way better than I expected. Hugh Grant is a 10/10 Oompa Loompa.

– This retainer cleaner. I didn’t want to spend $100 on a Zima, but found this one with better reviews and it was only $40. It made my Invisalign look brand new.

– Join us for the Healthy Habits Challenge! All the details are here. I can’t wait to do this with you.

– The Organifi Shilajit gummies are SO good – I can do a post on them if you’d like. You can check them out here and that link will auto-apply the code FITNESSISTA for 20% off.

Sending you wishes for a Happy New Year and I’ll see ya soon!
xo